DARPA’s LASSO Bet: Three Companies, One Brutal Orbit, and the Hunt for Lunar Ice

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected Benchmark Space Systems, Quantum Space, and Revolution Space to develop competing concepts for a small lunar orbiter capable of hunting water ice from altitudes most spacecraft cannot survive. The agency confirmed the three Phase 1 awards on April 30 for its Lunar Assay via Small Satellite Orbiter program, known as LASSO.

The mission profile is unusually demanding. LASSO would operate in very low lunar orbit while mapping locations where water ice exceeds 5% concentration...